TidBITS#1099/17-Oct-2011
========================
Issue link:
Last week brought the release of the iPhone 4S, iCloud, iOS 5, Mac OS
X 10.7.2, and a slew of smaller releases, and like everyone else we’ve
been struggling to wrap our heads around it all. To start, Glenn
Fleishman reports on the record sales of the iPhone 4S, Michael Cohen
looks at what iCloud means to BusyCal users, and Adam notes that you
can buy AppleCare+ for the iPhone after purchase (for a while). But
then we bring in the big guns with Jeff Carlson sharing our favorite
hidden and overlooked features in iOS 5 and Matt Neuburg running down
the major changes in Mac OS X 10.7.2. Matt also contributes a
thought-provoking look at what we users can expect from iOS apps once
developers start taking advantage of iOS 5’s new capabilities. Notable
software releases this week include iPhoto ’11 9.2, Aperture 3.2,
Safari 5.1.1 (Snow Leopard), Security Update 2011-006 (Snow Leopard
and Snow Leopard Server), Lion Recovery Update, GraphicConverter 7.4,
and Sparrow 1.4.
Articles
Apple Sells 4 Million Units of the iPhone 4S
Add AppleCare+ Through 14 November 2011
BusyCal 1.6 and the iCloud Transition
Meanwhile, Back at the Lion Ranch…
Secrets of iOS 5
iPhone 4S: A Very Palpable Hit
How iOS 5 Will Affect Developers — and You
TidBITS Watchlist: Notable Software Updates for 17 October 2011
ExtraBITS for 17 October 2011
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Apple Sells 4 Million Units of the iPhone 4S
--------------------------------------------
by Glenn Fleishman
article link:
For a failure, the iPhone 4S sure did well. Apple has now announced
that it sold 4 million new iPhones in the first three days of sales.
These figures represent twice the previous opening weekend record,
set for the iPhone 4 last year. That high level of purchases came
despite the continued increase in sales of the iPhone 4 in the
previous fiscal quarter.
The widespread media response to the iPhone 4S announcement was that
customers would be disappointed that Apple hadn’t revised the
industrial design or added flashy new features to a model that would
be called the iPhone 5. We long-time Apple watchers were less
surprised, partly because Apple has already set a two-year major
revision cycle for the phone (with the iPhone 3G and 3GS), and
partly because the majority of iPhone owners worldwide are under
contracts, typically two years long.
With a two-year contract, if you already owned an iPhone 4, you most
likely weren’t yet eligible for a subsidized upgrade. Apple
removed some of the envy factor by keeping it virtually identical in
appearance to the previous model, even while improving features like
the camera and antenna. This allows iPhone 4 owners to remain cool,
and should boost sales of the $99 iPhone 4 (with a two-year
contract) that became also available on 14 October 2011; similarly,
the iPhone 3GS is now free with a two-year contract. Apple didn’t
release sales figures for the two older models.
Sales were probably bolstered from several angles. First, original
iPhone, iPhone 3G, and iPhone 3GS owners who had waited through
upgrade cycles may have finally pulled the trigger. Second, although
Verizon Wireless began selling the iPhone 4 earlier this year, that
move was relatively low key, and Verizon has continued to promote
competitive Android smartphones heavily. This is the first
high-profile iPhone launch that Verizon could participate in. Third,
along with AT&T and Verizon Wireless, this launch marks the addition
of Sprint Nextel to the iPhone-selling carriers in the United
States. Fourth, the iPhone 4S launch included two more countries —
Canada and Australia — than the iPhone 4 launch.
These sales came despite trouble along the way. At midnight on 7
October 2011, the day pre-orders began, many people repeatedly
attempted to order a device for hours before the site became
available (I eventually gave up and went to bed). And once the
iPhone 4S actually arrived, activation was initially a nightmare,
with reports indicating AT&T was having particular trouble. (It took
me about five attempts to get my phone activated over Wi-Fi, and
both Tonya Engst and Jeff Carlson had to visit AT&T stores to get
SIMs swapped appropriately.)
Apple says 25 million customers upgraded to iOS 5 (customers, not
devices, so the company must be tracking by Apple ID), which could
be anywhere from 25 million to 50 or even 75 million devices. This
corresponds with Apple’s complementary announcement of 20 million
iCloud signups. If you do the math, that means Apple has to allot up
to 5 GB times 20 million accounts or 100 petabytes (PB). I
immediately filled my free 5 GB of iCloud storage and had to upgrade
to add another 20 GB. iCloud was, not surprisingly, sluggish and
sometimes unavailable on Friday and to a lesser extent over the
weekend.
High usage also seemed to trouble Siri, Apple’s iPhone 4S
voice-control and dictation system, since Siri requires access to
Apple’s servers for speech analysis. It’s likely Siri saw
disproportionately high initial use as people tried it out and
demonstrated it, too. This may help account for why Apple has
limited Siri to the iPhone 4S when the iPhone 4 and even the 3GS
should be able to run the app. Once Apple has learned more about how
Siri usage from the relatively small set of iPhone 4S users impacts
the back end servers, it’s possible that we’ll see the company
open Siri up to owners of older iPhones too.
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Add AppleCare+ Through 14 November 2011
---------------------------------------
by Adam C. Engst
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1 comment
New with the iPhone 4S release is something Apple is calling
AppleCare+, which turns the standard AppleCare extended warranty
into an insurance policy of sorts. Whereas traditional AppleCare
only protects against manufacturing defects and extends the tech
support call window from 90 days to 2 years, AppleCare+ also covers
up to two incidents of accidental damage. AppleCare used to cost
$69; AppleCare+ retails for $99, and each incident of accidental
damage may have a $49 service fee.
Previously, if you damaged your iPhone, you could attempt to throw
yourself on the mercy of the people at an Apple Genius Bar for a
free repair or replacement, but failing that, it could cost $200 or
more. AppleCare+ replaces AppleCare for the iPhone in general, and
it’s available for any new iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, or iPhone 3GS.
Whether AppleCare+ is a good deal for you depends on how careful —
and lucky — you are with your portable electronics; I generally
like such insurance policies for devices that are easily dropped.
Apple said initially that AppleCare+ had to be purchased at the same
time as the iPhone 4S, and that’s now possible, but we didn’t
remember any indication of AppleCare+ appearing during the pre-order
process. And when Tonya activated the iPhone 4S while talking with
an AT&T tech support rep who was helping get all of our numbers
associated with the proper devices, she didn’t remember seeing
anything about AppleCare+ then either, though she was moving
quickly. So the question is, if, like us, you somehow ended up with
an iPhone 4S but not AppleCare+, how do you add it after the fact?
When asked, the AT&T reps at our local AT&T store found some
indication in their information that AppleCare+ could be added only
within the first 24 hours after activation, although they hadn’t
yet tried to add it to any account either during or after the first
24 hours. Unfortunately, since Tonya activated the iPhone 4S on
Saturday morning, we were outside the 24 hour window by the time we
learned this information. So they recommended calling Apple at
800-MY-IPHON (800-694-7466), which we did. The Apple rep on the
other end had no information about how long after purchase or
activation AppleCare+ could be ordered, but his computer system
allowed him to add it to our account. Phew!
When I started researching the situation online for this article, I
found this note on the AppleCare+ page in the Apple Store. It
clarifies the situation, noting that anyone who pre-ordered an
iPhone 4S or 8 GB iPhone 4, or who purchased any model of iPhone
after 14 October 2011, is eligible to purchase AppleCare+ through 14
November 2011.
So there you have it. If you want AppleCare+ for a just-purchased
iPhone 4S, you have a month to add it. But after that point,
you’ll need to purchase AppleCare+ with the phone, or perhaps
within that 24 hour period after activation that AT&T told me about.
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BusyCal 1.6 and the iCloud Transition
-------------------------------------
by Michael E. Cohen
article link:
3 comments
This has been a roller-coaster year for users of Apple’s
calendaring services. First there was the transition from the old
MobileMe calendars, which used Mac OS X Sync Services, to the new
MobileMe CalDAV-powered calendars (see “Upgrade to MobileMe
Calendar by 5 May 2011,” 3 March 2011). Then there was the Mac OS
X 10.7 Lion release, and with it a retooling of the look and feel of
the Mac OS X default calendar app, iCal. And now, with the release
of iOS 5 and iCloud on 12 October, calendaring for Apple users has
changed again.
Third-party calendar developers have had to scramble and scramble
again to keep up with all of these changes. BusyMac, creator of the
popular BusyCal calendar and to-do list manager, has been running
this calendrical Red Queen’s race along with everyone else, and
has now released BusyCal 1.6 as a free update to current BusyCal
users to bring the product in line with the latest calendaring
changes imposed by iCloud (although the update is recommended for
BusyCal users whether or not they are ascending to the iCloud).
BusyMac makes it clear that BusyCal 1.6 is not all that is necessary
to make the iCloud transition problem-free, and to that end has
provided an informative upgrade guide for the iCloud transition. The
guide details the important differences between MobileMe and iCloud
calendaring, provides a list of migration scenarios (for example,
describing how Google calendar users or LAN calendar users might
migrate), and then devotes itself to a comprehensive seven-step
procedure for upgrading to iCloud with BusyCal.
If you, like many TidBITS staffers, rely upon BusyCal to keep track
of your various work, domestic, and shared calendars, and you are
about to make the iCloud leap, you should download and install the
update and then spend some time reading the upgrade guide carefully
before following its instructions. It’s time well spent. BusyCal
1.6 costs $49.99 from the BusyMac Store or the Mac App Store; it’s
a 7 MB download.
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Meanwhile, Back at the Lion Ranch…
----------------------------------
by Matt Neuburg
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5 comments
In the course of Apple’s super-release last Wednesday, most of the
air got sucked out of the room by the new iPhone 4S and iOS 5. But
those weren’t the only components of the release. For developers,
there was Xcode 4.2 for both Snow Leopard and Lion. And for Lion
users, there was Mac OS X 10.7.2, which appeared in the usual four
forms, including delta and combo updaters for both Lion and Lion
Server. As always, it’s easiest to let Software Update handle the
delta updates; the combo updaters are useful if you have to
reinstall for some reason.
* Mac OS X Lion Update 10.7.2 (Client): 768.84 MB
* Mac OS X Lion Update 10.7.2 (Client) Combo: 818.59 MB
* Mac OS X Lion Update 10.7.2 (Server): 842.49 MB
* Mac OS X Lion Update 10.7.2 (Server) Combo: 892.24 MB
Considering how long it has been since Lion was originally released
(see “Our Favorite Hidden Features in Mac OS X Lion,” 20 July
2011), and considering the minimal nature of the early bug-fix
release 10.7.1 (see “Mac OS X 10.7.1 Fixes Just a Few Bugs,” 16
August 2011), 10.7.2 may come as something of a disappointment. If
you were seriously expecting that Apple would provide an official
option for turning off major new features such as Auto Save, those
hopes are dashed; modifying (or even moderating) its strategy is not
a typical part of the Apple ethos. Even minor tweaks are fairly few
and far between.
The delay in releasing 10.7.2 was not, it appears, so that Apple
could make extensive changes, but so that iCloud could appear on
your Mac and your iOS devices simultaneously; in other words, iCloud
is 10.7.2’s big new feature. Now, iCloud is a major subject, and
we’ll doubtless be featuring considerably more news and
information about it shortly. (Suffice it to say for now that
initial efforts to move to iCloud have been fraught with problems
for many people, so if you’re not desperate to try the new
features, you might want to wait for a bit.) So let’s leave iCloud
to one side for a moment and focus on the rest of 10.7.2. It turns
out that a couple of the behaviors mentioned in our article
“Subtle Irritations in Lion” (17 August 2011) are in fact
emended, and there are a few additional if subtle usability
improvements. Here’s a rundown of some of the more noticeable
changes in 10.7.2 (and if you find others, please do mention them in
the comments).
**Auto Termination** -- The Auto Termination behavior that I discussed
in “Lion Is a Quitter” (5 August 2011) appears to be moderated
somewhat. In my experiments, applications such as TextEdit and
Preview no longer vanish from the Command-Tab switcher the moment
they were backgrounded and without windows. But they did
_eventually_ vanish from the Command-Tab switcher (and the Dock, if
they weren’t permanently resident there). So while the timing may
have been changed, the basic behavior has not; and the basic
behavior still seems to me to be just plain wrong. Auto Termination
should be completely transparent, meaning that the user should not
be able to tell that anything has happened; removing an application
from the Command-Tab switcher, when the user knows darned well that
it was there a while ago, is disruptive and confusing.
**Smart Folders** -- Smart Folders, at long last, are working
correctly in Lion. For some of us, this is a major bug fix (though
its tardiness is unforgivable, seeing as Apple knew about the
problem well before Lion was originally released). Briefly, you can
now save a Spotlight search as a Smart Folder and then later
correctly view (and possibly modify) that Smart Folder’s search
criteria. This makes Smart Folders useful once again, restoring
their behavior to match that of earlier versions of Mac OS X. For
more information about using Smart Folders, see Sharon Zardetto’s
“Take Control of Spotlight for Finding Anything on Your Mac.”
**Desktop Order** -- In Mission Control’s All Windows mode, desktop
spaces and full-screen applications beyond the Dashboard and the
first desktop can now be rearranged by dragging. (This change is
actually called out in Apple’s own release notes.) This should
make manual management of desktops far easier; if you uncheck
“Automatically rearrange spaces based on most recent use” in the
Mission Control preference pane, in particular, the order of spaces
and full-screen applications should be completely predictable and
under your control. Previously, you were stuck with the order in
which desktop spaces and full-screen applications were created, or
the order in which the automatic rearrangement algorithm chose to
re-sort them for you.
Moreover, desktop spaces now survive a restart: if you allow open
windows to be restored as you log out, restart, or shut down, then
when you log back in, those windows will resume their places in the
spaces where you left them.
**Versions on Unsupported Volumes** -- In “Beware Lion’s Versions
Bug on Network and Non-HFS+ Volumes” (8 September 2011), Adam
Engst outlined a situation where you could end up working on a
document on a server or non-HFS+ volume (which Versions can’t
handle) without realizing that Versions wasn’t protecting you. In
10.7.2, Apple has addressed this bug in the simplest possible
fashion, by putting up a warning when you try to close a document
stored on an unsupported volume. The only problem is, as reader Joel
Lingenfelter complained, is that if someone opens a document on a
server, modifies it, has the changes saved by Auto Save but ignored
by Versions, and then tries to close, the only options provided are
Cancel and Close. Thus, the only way to close the document without
the auto-saved changes is to click Cancel and then use Undo
repeatedly to revert to the initial state of the document, which is
clumsy and error-prone.
**Anything Else?** -- Launchpad icons are considerably larger. And a
tiny but definite change that I particularly appreciate (as a user
of multiple systems) is that when pressing the Restart button after
changing your setting in the Startup Disk preference pane, it is
once again possible (as in previous versions of the system) to hold
Option to skip the confirmation dialog. Apart from these, very few
visible changes seem to be manifest; but the release notes list
numerous small technical fixes that will probably improve the
overall quality of life for Lion users. For example, Safari 5.1.1 is
said to fix issues with hangs and memory usage that were all too
obvious. On the other hand, MacBook Pro users who have been seeing
Lion crash (kernel panic?) to a black screen will, apparently,
continue experiencing this issue until Apple issues a firmware
update, expected soon.
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Secrets of iOS 5
----------------
by Jeff Carlson
article link:
20 comments
Whenever a major new version of Apple software is released, the
high-profile features get a lot of attention — but of course
plenty of other changes are also worked into the update. Now that
iOS 5 is out, we can focus our spotlight on stuff that we feel is
cool, overlooked, or both.
**iPad Split Keyboard** -- If you type with your thumbs while holding
an iPad in both hands, or if you want to move the onscreen keyboard,
check out the new Split Keyboard feature.
To begin parting this pixelated Red Sea, drag the Show/Hide button
at the lower right of the keyboard up the screen. As you do, the
keyboard splits into two sections, making the keys smaller but
closer to the screen edges. Continue to drag the button to
reposition the keyboard vertically on the screen.
However, you don’t need to use the Show/Hide button to make the
split: Using your thumbs, drag outward from the middle of the
keyboard. To put the keyboard together again, put a thumb on each
section and push them together.
If you prefer the non-split keyboard, but want to move it onscreen,
touch and hold the Show/Hide button to reveal a popover with
commands to Undock or Split the keyboard. Tap Undock and then drag
the keyboard up or down.
When the keyboard is split and repositioned, the popover changes to
read Dock and Merge, dropping the joined keyboard to the bottom of
the screen.
As before, tapping the Show/Hide button makes the keyboard disappear
and takes you out of text-entry mode.
(If things don’t seem to be working, enable the split keyboard in
Settings > General > Keyboard.)
**Shortcuts** -- Much as we like Smile’s TextExpander touch and the
apps in which it works, it’s not available everywhere in iOS, but
the new Shortcuts feature is. While you’re in Settings > General >
Keyboard, you can create shortcuts and expansions, making it easy,
for instance, to type “eml” and have iOS 5 automatically expand
to your email address. It’s not as full-featured as TextExpander
touch — for example, long snippets don’t retain line breaks —
but for short common phrases or frequently made typos, the text
shortcuts help.
**Calendar Week View on the iPhone** -- Here’s a long-awaited
feature: On the iPhone, open the Calendar app and rotate the phone
to its landscape orientation to reveal a scrolling week view.
This is a more convenient way to move through events on such a small
screen, and it’s a welcome addition.
**A New iPad Mailboxes View** -- In Mail on the iPad, in portrait
view, swipe left to right with two fingers to display the mailbox
list, which slides as a panel from the side of the screen.
I don’t know why the list doesn’t appear as a popover, as it
used to — perhaps Mail will become the iTunes of the iPad: the
place where Apple experiments with interface.
**Location-Based Reminders Missing on iPad** -- On an iPhone running
iOS 5, you can create a task in the Reminders app that produces an
alert based on location. For example, you can specify not only that
you need to call someone, but the reminder alert will pop up when
you reach your office. To do so, create a new reminder, tap it to
view details, tap the Remind Me button, and then tap the At a
Location button.
Unfortunately, that feature seems to be limited to the iPhone. When
I do the same thing on my iPad 2, there’s no At a Location option,
even though it’s an iPad 2 with 3G and a GPS chip built in.
Fortunately, reminders with location alerts that I create on the
iPhone don’t lose that information when synced to the iPad via
iCloud.
**Swipe to Advance in the iPad Calendar** -- The lack of this feature
was a pet peeve of mine in previous versions of iOS on the iPad.
Although the Calendar app was designed to look like a real desk
calendar, even including bits of torn paper at the top of the
“sheets,” it wasn’t possible to swipe to turn the virtual
pages. Instead, you had to tap the linear navigation controls that
appear below the calendar.
Now, finally, you can swipe to advance the pages of the calendar
views. In fact, you can drag a finger slowly from an edge or corner
to turn the pages gradually, as introduced in the iBooks app.
**Wireless Sync without Power** -- One of my favorite iOS 5 features
is syncing devices over a wireless network. With the Wi-Fi Sync
option enabled, the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch initiate a sync
when plugged into a power source. So, for example, you can plug a
charging cable into an iPhone and sync, even if the computer it
belongs to is running in another room.
It turns out that even the charging cable isn’t required —
it’s just a convenient way to start an automatic sync. To initiate
a manual sync with a device that’s been set up with Wi-Fi syncing,
go to Settings > General > iTunes Wi-Fi Sync > Sync Now. Or, in
iTunes, select the device in the sidebar and click the Sync button.
**Enable AirPlay Mirroring on iPad 2 and iPhone 4S** -- I include this
tidbit because the control wasn’t easy to find. The iPad 2 and
iPhone 4S (but not the iPhone 4) can mirror their screens on an HDTV
through an Apple TV running the latest version of its software,
wirelessly, using AirPlay.
1. Bring up the multitasking bar (by either pressing the Home button
twice, or, on the iPad 2, swiping up with four or five fingers).
2. Scroll left-to-right to reveal the brightness and audio playback
controls. On the iPhone 4S, you need to scroll left-to-right twice
to reveal the volume slider and the AirPlay button.
3. Tap the AirPlay button, and tap the name of your Apple TV.
4. Tap the Mirroring switch to turn it on. The screen appears on your
HDTV.
This feature is great for giving presentations, although it would be
even better if there was an option to also show finger taps (without
jailbreaking the device) to enable viewers to better follow along
when you’re doing live how-to demonstrations. But there’s also
an added benefit: Using mirroring, you can watch video content that
is otherwise blocked from normal AirPlay playback, such as the ABC
app.
**Open the Camera App Quickly** -- A helpful new photo feature is the
ability to tap a Camera button on the iPhone’s lock screen to jump
directly to the Camera app. However, pressing the Sleep/Wake or Home
buttons doesn’t reveal this handy new control. I kept searching
for a preference to enable the feature, but it was actually under my
thumb all the time: _double-press_ the Home button when the screen
is locked. This action also reveals the music playback controls (the
normal behavior for a double Home press in iOS 4). Surprisingly, the
camera-enabled iPad 2 does not gain this feature — perhaps because
the camera isn’t really good enough for taking photos?
**Switch Between Apps Using Gestures** -- On the iPad 2, a new
Multitasking Gestures preference (in Settings > General) enables you
to bring up the multitasking bar by swiping up with four or five
fingers. But you can bypass the bar entirely by swiping left or
right with the same number of fingers to access recent apps. To
return to the Home screen, pinch in with five fingers. Alas, the
Multitasking Gestures are available only on the iPad 2, not the
original iPad.
**Invoke Siri without the Home Button** -- On the iPhone 4S, pressing
and holding the Home button activates the new Siri voice-activated
assistant. If you’re not comfortable dictating commands like
Scotty talking to a mouse in “Star Trek IV,” simply bring the
phone up to your ear. The proximity sensor activates Siri, letting
you talk as if you were making a call. The only catch is that you
must first wake/unlock the phone to make the feature work. You can
disable this option by going to Settings > General > Siri and
turning off Raise to Speak.
**Change the Order of Apps in the Notification Center** -- Swiping
with one finger down from the top of the screen displays the helpful
new Notification Center. You can change the order that apps appear
— for example, suppose you want Calendar events to appear at the
top of the screen instead of the current weather. Go to Settings >
Notifications and tap the Edit button. You can then drag an item
using its move icon (three gray stacked bars); tap Done to apply the
change.
**Others?** -- These are just a few cool features of iOS 5. As you run
into others, I encourage you to share them in this article’s
comments section.
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iPhone 4S: A Very Palpable Hit
------------------------------
by Michael E. Cohen
article link:
1 comment
The waves of ho-hummery emanating from the assembled punditry
following Apple’s iPhone 4S roll-out event (see “New iPhone 4S
Adds Voice Recognition and Goes Global,” 4 October 2011) have now
been overtaken both by the amazing number of sales of the phone
(more than 1 million were pre-ordered on the first day, and Apple is
now saying that it has sold over 4 million in the first weekend!)
and by a spate of reviews of the device from writers who have
actually had the opportunity to use one. The consensus: it’s a
fine update of an already fine product.
Since we at TidBITS were not among the blessed few to whom Apple
deigned to provide an iPhone 4S for review purposes before release,
we’ll content ourselves with providing a quick roundup of what
early reviews have said so far; our initial experiences with the
iPhone 4S since we first published this roundup on our Web site are
in line with what other reviewers found. The following are presented
in no particular order.
First up, Macworld’s Jason Snell provides a comprehensive look at
the device in his “iPhone 4S review: It’s a sure thing.”
Starting off with a look at its oh-so-familiar form factor
(“It’s a classic look, easily my favorite of all the iPho+ne
designs to date”), Snell describes the tiny details by which one
can tell a 4 from a 4S. He then takes a look at the speed provided
by the new A5 chip for various functions, concluding that the only
iOS device that can beat it for processing alacrity is the iPad 2.
Covering the capability of the iPhone 4S to connect to either GSM or
CDMA networks, he notes that international travelers are the ones
who might benefit most by it (though see Glenn Fleishman’s
“Apple’s World Phone Isn’t Global for Customers,” 7 October
2011), and gives AT&T some props by pointing out that the
much-maligned original iPhone carrier “does have one clear
advantage over the other carriers in the U.S., however: speed.” He
also takes a look at the new antenna system (“there’s no way you
will be able to ‘death grip‘ the iPhone 4S unless you are trying
to literally strangle your phone”), and at the new, faster, more
powerful camera: “I’d wager that the iPhone 4S will _actually_
be the best camera in the household of the majority of its
owners.” The largest part of his review, however, covers the
voice-recognition capabilities of the device, including the
artificial intelligence power of the iPhone 4S-only Siri software as
well as the voice dictation: of both, he wonders why they are
restricted to the iPhone 4S, since they would be of benefit to
iPhone 4 users as well. Summing it all up, Snell concludes that for
“all those people who’ve been hanging on to their iPhone 3G or
iPhone 3GS, the wait is over: It’s time to upgrade without any
hesitation whatsoever.”
In his New York Times review, “New iPhone Conceals Sheer Magic,”
David Pogue immediately confronts the pundit-spawned elephant in the
room: “[W]hat people really wanted was the iPhone 5,” and then
sets about demolishing those unreal expectations with citations of
real improvements. Speed? Yes, it is faster (though “it’s not
like people were complaining about the previous iPhone’s
speed”). Camera? “[T]his phone comes dangerously close to
displacing a $200 point-and-shoot digital camera.” World phone?
Yes, it is. Speech recognition? “Crazy good, transformative,
category-redefining speech recognition.” Again, the bulk of
Pogue’s review focuses on the speech recognition capabilities,
peppering the description of his Siri interactions with phrases like
“mind-blowing,” “amazing,” and “incredible.” His
conclusion circles back to the whole iPhone 4S versus 5 statement
with which he started: “The question isn’t what’s in a name
— it’s what’s in a phone. And the answer is: ‘A lot of
amazing technology. And some of it feels like magic.’”
MG Siegler at TechCrunch also starts out with the phone name
kerfuffle in “The iPhone 4S: Faster, More Capable, And You Can
Talk To It.” His question is, “What does the ‘S’ stand
for?” His answer: “[T]he ‘S’ can stand for any number of
things depending on who is using the device. Here’s all I know for
certain: this is the best iPhone yet.” He proceeds to back up that
encomium by looking at the new A5 chip (“the iPhone 4S blows away
the iPhone 4 when it comes to speed”), the camera (“If the
point-and-shoot market wasn’t in trouble before, it will be
now”), the new iOS and, especially, its improved notifications
system (“There is no way I could go back to the old system”),
and, of course, Siri (“Siri is great”). His bottom line: “The
iPhone 4 was a great product. The best smartphone ever made. Now it
cedes that title to the iPhone 4S.”
At This Is My Next, Joshua Topolsky deals with issues of style and
substance in his “iPhone 4S Review,” remarking that the iPhone
4S “is very much the same phone the company released in June of
2010 — but it’s also something completely new.” He notes that
“hardware is only half the story,” the other half being, of
course, iOS 5 and Siri. And of Siri he remarks, “It understands
and responds to you in a way that’s so natural it can sometimes be
unsettling.” Topolsky marches down all of the key improvements in
the iPhone 4S, such as the antenna, saying that he could impair
reception if he “tightly held it on both the bottom and top of the
device (along the notches in the antenna)”, although he also
points out, “This is, of course, a totally absurd way to grip a
phone.” Like other reviewers, he offers plaudits for the camera
(“If you’ve ever thought about using a phone as a replacement
for your point-and-shoot, feel free to start taking that concept
seriously”), but of the speedier A5 chip he observes, “it feels
like a tweak, not an overhaul.” His bottom line: “Is this the
best phone ever made? That’s debatable. But I can tell you this:
the iPhone 4S is pretty damn cool.”
Wired offers Brian X. Chen’s “With Siri, the iPhone Finds Its
Voice.” Chen thinks he knows what the “S” in “iPhone 4S”
stands for: Siri. Calling the other improvements to the iPhone 4S
“classy additions,” Chen makes no bones about saying, “Siri is
the reason people should buy this phone.” Referring to it as “a
life-changer,” Chen waxes rhapsodic about what Siri portends:
“voice control is going to be huge” and “the possibilities are
endless.” He doesn’t ignore the hardware improvements, calling
them “nice,” but he feels that they are “minor compared to the
addition of Siri.” His bottom line is simple: “both inside and
out, this is a magnificent smartphone.”
All Things D’s Walt Mossberg, as one might expect, was one of the
chosen few to receive an iPhone 4S to review, and, like Brian X.
Chen, believes that “The standout feature, not available in other
iPhones, or in any other phone I’ve seen, is Siri.” As for the
rest of the features, they don’t make the iPhone 4S “a dramatic
game-changer like some previous iPhones” for Mossberg, though he
does point out that “It’s a better iPhone for the same $199
entry price, at a time when some competitors are pricing their
flagship smartphones starting at $299,” and he feels that the
“iPhone 4S offers a camera experience I find unmatched on any
other phone.” His bottom line is less enthusiastic than many other
reviewers’, but, even so, he says it is “an attractive new
offering to smartphone users,” and he expects that “those buying
the phone will likely be happy with it.”
Lastly, Stephen Fry’s review in The Guardian offers an articulate,
idiosyncratic take on the iPhone 4S, Steve Jobs’s legacy, and the
state of high-tech culture in an amusing, touching, wide-ranging
piece. From his reaction to receiving the phone (“You can imagine,
I hope, the ambivalence I felt as I tested and trialled this phone
in the knowledge that it was the last fully operational Apple device
[Jobs] would ever see.”) to his final evaluation of it
(“irresistible”), he delivers a unique account of using it and
what it means in the larger scheme of things. It’s not the most
technically detailed evaluation of the iPhone 4S that you’ll ever
read, but it is probably among the wittiest and most personal.
----
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How iOS 5 Will Affect Developers — and You
------------------------------------------
by Matt Neuburg
article link:
1 comment
The term “iOS 5” means different things to different people. To
the general public, it means a whole new face for iOS devices, with
new apps like Reminder, new icons like Newsstand, new interface like
notification banners and the Notification Center, and new features
like Reader in Mobile Safari and hourly forecasts in Weather. But to
a developer, iOS 5 also means the iOS 5 SDK (software development
kit) that comes with Xcode 4.2, released at the same time as iOS 5
itself. The SDK represents the toolbox, the built-in bag of tricks
that an app can take advantage of.
Most existing apps have probably not been significantly affected by
users shoving iOS 5 onto their devices; my own apps, for example,
seem to be running precisely as they were under iOS 4. (A sad
casualty, however, is Stanza, which is toast on my devices; but
then, somehow one already suspected that Amazon had bought Lexcycle
for the sole purpose of killing it.) But many developers are rushing
(or have already rushed, during the beta period preceding the
official release) to recompile their apps with the iOS 5 SDK, making
those apps iOS 5-native and enabling them to take advantage of the
expanded toolbox that the iOS 5 SDK brings.
Those changes, in turn, will affect what _you_ see on your
device’s screen. As more and more apps adopt iOS 5, iOS 5 SDK
features will become part of your own user experience. So what are
some of these features, and how might they manifest themselves in
your daily usage?
The main place to look for answers is Apple’s own release notes
for iOS 5. I can’t tell you anything you couldn’t ferret out for
yourself by perusing that document; but in case you’d prefer that
I peruse it so you don’t have to, here are some thoughts about the
main changes you can expect to see as the iOS 5 SDK catches hold
among developers.
**Hey (Hey) You (You), Get Onto iCloud** -- The big story, as is
perfectly obvious from the amount of space devoted to it in the
release notes, is iCloud. iCloud offers developers the opportunity
to store an app’s documents and other data online in a way
that’s intended to be convenient and even transparent to the user.
Thus, a user could work on a document using Device A, then later
pick up Device B and, in essence, find the very same document there,
in the very same state.
It will help to think of iCloud as having two different purposes:
backup and sync. The iCloud backup is largely just a substitution of
wireless technology for something you were already doing every time
you hooked your device to your computer and backed it up in the
course of a sync. But iCloud sync is a way of sharing data across
applications running on different devices. In the past, this sort of
thing has been implemented through a variety of ad hoc solutions
(such as Dropbox integration, or even building your own server);
iCloud’s promise is a universal solution that all Lion and iOS
apps can use fairly easily.
Your first 5 GB of iCloud storage are free, so developers will
expect a significant proportion of their users to have iCloud space
that their apps can use. Moreover, iCloud can also store small
preference files that don’t count against a user’s iCloud
storage quota. I think the result will be that many apps will
integrate iCloud, and that users, in their turn, will soon _expect_
iCloud integration in their iOS experience. For example, if I’ve
entered my New York Times paywall username and password into the
NYTimes app running on my iPod touch, I’m going to be miffed if I
have to enter it again into the NYTimes app running on my iPad, when
I know darned well that the app itself could be taking advantage of
iCloud to share my preferences between instances of itself.
More broadly, I also wonder whether the document-oriented nature of
iCloud may not constitute an invitation for apps to become
document-centric in a way that previously they were not.
Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, iOS 5 does nothing to help apps
provide a uniform interface to let the user manage documents; iOS
has no Finder, so each app must forge its own way of displaying
documents and helping the user operate on them. Compare, for
example, the Pages “document manager” screen with the GoodReader
“manage files” pane; from an interface perspective, they have
basically nothing in common.
**Who Built the ARC** -- The next big change called out in the release
notes is ARC (automatic reference counting). This is the sort of
feature only a programmer could love; it happens right down at the
level of the programming language, Objective-C, in which iOS apps
are written. But it’s an important change to the user, in one
respect: If things go as planned, ARC should mean that apps will
crash less often.
The reason is, simply, that Objective-C is not a very good language,
and one of the ways in which it’s not very good is memory
management. Up to now, memory management has been handled manually
by the programmer; this, in turn, has meant not only that writing an
app for iOS is an unusually fussy and tiring business, but also that
memory management itself is a prime opportunity for the programmer
to make a mistake that will result in the app either leaking memory
and eventually crashing, or attempting to access an object that has
gone out of existence and (you guessed it) crashing.
Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, it’s difficult for Apple
to take the step they really should have taken long ago, namely, to
make some other language the native iOS programming language. It’s
easier for them to adopt a different compiler (LLVM), which can take
the programmer’s Objective-C code and do things with it that
couldn’t be done by the previous compiler (GCC). In particular,
LLVM can now insert, automatically, the manual memory management
code that the programmer has up to now had to write by hand.
That’s ARC.
Memory management in an iOS program is still manual, but, thanks to
ARC, it’s written by the compiler instead of the programmer; the
programmer effectively omits all the memory management code and lets
the compiler write it instead. Since the compiler is more reliable
at this sort of routine task than the programmer, memory management
should be more correct more of the time (and the programmer won’t
be so bored and can apply creativity to making the program do its
actual tasks).
So, as iOS apps are rewritten using ARC, certain kinds of crash may
become less frequent. Of course, there are other kinds of crashes;
in particular, multithreading is still hard and will still probably
be a source of trouble.
**Structure My Screen** -- In iOS 5, the ways in which apps can
physically lay out their interfaces are expanded. For example,
without getting too technical, on the iPhone especially the unit of
view substitution has been, up to now, the screen itself: a primary
view, managed behind the scenes by something called a view
controller, took over the entire screen and responded to things like
rotation of the device; and the programmer was not supposed to use a
view controller except to manage this primary whole-screen view. The
framework then provided a limited number of ways in which a view
controller could manage other view controllers, such as the
navigation interface and the tab-bar interface — which is why
those styles of interface are so common.
But in iOS 5, the programmer is at last permitted to write a custom
view controller that manages other view controllers; so I would
expect to see completely new interface management idioms. It will be
easier, for example, to split the screen into panes and have each
pane do its own navigation between views. Moreover, iOS 5 gives the
programmer more control over the transition animation when one view
is substituted for another. There is much room here for creativity
and originality.
A completely new style of application supported by the system is the
_page-based_ application. In effect, this lets any programmer
implement the look of iBooks (including the snazzy page-curling
animation), except that the view shown on each “page” can be any
view whatever. For example, my Greek and Latin vocabulary apps
display flashcards, with the user scrolling left or right to reach
the next or previous “card”; I could now probably convert this
quite easily to a book metaphor where the user pages between cards,
and in the process I could remove a lot of code where I was
inventing just the sort of wheel (e.g. preparing the next card
before the user scrolls to it) that the page-based application hands
me on a plate.
**Wild, Wild Widgets** -- Changes involving the onscreen widgets that
the user can see and touch should be extremely obvious. Some of
these are legitimate, system-based versions of things that
programmers were doing for themselves by a variety of sometimes
dubious means, and that’s a good thing — fighting the framework
is a lot of work, and it’s risky, so the more the framework
_gives_ programmers the capabilities they clearly want, the better.
Prepare for your screen to become much more colorful! In previous
iOS versions, the supplied widgets came either in a single color
scheme or in a limited set of optional color schemes. A switch (the
thing that says ON and OFF) was blue when ON and that was that; now
it can be any color. That sort of thing is true for most of the
standard widgets that constitute the interface. Custom images can be
added to most widgets, and it’s easy for the programmer to enforce
a uniform custom color scheme throughout an app.
A number of widgets are altered in subtle ways; a switch, for
example, now has a round sliding part instead of a square. Alerts
(tiny dialogs with buttons) can now accept text input. A completely
new widget is the stepper, allowing the user to increase or decrease
a number by tapping. Table views are more powerful. A split view,
like what you see in landscape orientation on the iPad in our
TidBITS News app, is no longer forced to hide the “master” view
into a popover summoned by a toolbar button when the user rotates to
portrait orientation.
Drawing effects such as blurring, previously available only in Mac
OS X, are now provided also in iOS. Applications now have direct
access to the hardware for dimming the backlight on the device
(previously, only Apple’s own iBooks could do this). Any
application can display the dictionary definition for a selected
word.
**Conclusion** -- Let’s sum up. Based on the changes in the
capabilities with which iOS 5 endows the programmer, what changes
can you, the user, expect to see as more and more iOS 5-native apps
come online? Data, such as documents and preferences, will be
optionally stored in the cloud and thus shared between instances of
an app on different devices. Apps should run more reliably as it
becomes easier for programmers to avoid memory-management mistakes.
The screen should become a brighter, peppier place, as programmers
endow their widgets with color. And interfaces generally should
become more expressive and more original, as programmers are able to
let you navigate between subviews in novel ways.
The genius of iOS is that it allows the programmer to do much with
little. There are remarkably few built-in widgets; yet they are
sufficient to endow the tiny iPhone screen with great power and ease
of use. To me, iOS 5 (from the programmer’s point of view) is a
natural development, based largely on Apple’s own observation of
the ways in which programmers have pushed at the boundaries of what
the framework was readily permitting them to do; it’s an
evolution, a coherent growth, gently expanding the programmer’s
range of abilities while continuing to respect the conventions that
have made iOS such a hotbed of great apps.
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TidBITS Watchlist: Notable Software Updates for 17 October 2011
---------------------------------------------------------------
by TidBITS Staff
article link:
**iPhoto ’11 9.2** -- In the massive iCloud-related set of software
updates, Apple released iPhoto ’11 9.2. Along with providing
compatibility with iCloud’s Photo Stream feature, iPhoto 9.2 adds
left and right swipe gestures for navigating between photos in
Magnify (1-up) view, displays previously imported photos in a
separate section of the Import window, and enables you to choose
book/calendar/card themes from a pop-up menu in the carousel view.
Several bugs have also been fixed, including one that could cause
pages of books to print incorrectly and another that could lose
saved slideshows and books when rebuilding a library. It’s easiest
to get iPhoto 9.2 via Software Update or the Mac App Store. ($14.99
new from the Mac App Store, free update, 357.18 MB)
Read/post comments about iPhoto ’11 9.2.
**Aperture 3.2** -- Along with the iCloud-enabled iPhoto, Apple has
pushed out Aperture 3.2 to provide compatibility with iCloud’s
Photo Stream feature. A number of other minor changes round out the
release, notably support for left and right swipe gestures for
navigating between photos, the pinch-to-zoom gesture activating Zoom
mode in the Viewer, relaunching into Full Screen mode if the app was
in Full Screen mode when last quit, support for Microsoft Outlook
for sending photos via email, and an option in the Import window to
delete photos from an iOS device after import. Bugs have been fixed
too, including a crashing bug when using brushes to apply
adjustments, problems with Loupe displaying magnification levels
between 50 and 100 percent, incorrect color profiles on externally
edited images, and incorrect cursor icons when using the Lift &
Stamp tool in Split View and Viewer Only modes. ($79.99 new from the
Mac App Store, free update, 635.76 MB, release notes)
Read/post comments about Aperture 3.2.
**Safari 5.1.1 (Snow Leopard)** -- Although Safari 5.1.1 for Lion,
which comes as part of the 10.7.2 update, now supports syncing of
Safari bookmarks and the Safari Reading List to your devices via
iCloud, 10.6 Snow Leopard isn’t currently compatible with iCloud.
Thus, Safari 5.1.1 for Snow Leopard gains no new features, but it
does boast improved JavaScript performance, and Apple took this
opportunity to fix problems with excessive memory usage, along with
stability issues related to Find, dragging tabs, managing
extensions, and the Silverlight plug-in used by Netflix and other
sites. Other bugs fixed include problems with printing, entering
East Asian characters into pages with Flash content, History items
appearing incorrectly, and automatic updates to the Google Safe
Browsing Service. In Snow Leopard, Safari 5.1.1 requires Mac OS X
10.6.8 and Security Update 2011-006. (Free, 47.05 MB)
Read/post comments about Safari 5.1.1 (Snow Leopard).
**Security Update 2011-006 (Snow Leopard and Snow Leopard Server)** --
To bring the security fixes from Mac OS X 10.7.2 Lion back to 10.6
Snow Leopard, Apple has released Security Update 2011-006 (Snow
Leopard) and Security Update 2011-006 (Snow Leopard Server). The
security vulnerabilities addressed are many and varied, with
numerous affected components. Plus, Apple has updated a number of
root SSL/TLS certificates. We recommend these updates for anyone
still running Snow Leopard; it’s easiest to let Software Update
install the correct version for you. (Free, 136.28 MB for Snow
Leopard / 144.91 MB for Snow Leopard Server)
Read/post comments about Security Update 2011-006 (Snow Leopard and
Snow Leopard Server).
**Lion Recovery Update** -- It’s not a small download, but all Apple
says about the Lion Recovery Update is that it improves Lion
Recovery and fixes a bug related to Find My Mac when using a
firmware password. Hopefully you won’t have to rely on Lion
Recovery, which enables you to perform some troubleshooting and to
reinstall Lion by booting from a special hidden partition on your
hard disk. Software Update is the easiest way to get and install
this update. (Free, 431.91 MB)
Read/post comments about Lion Recovery Update.
**GraphicConverter 7.4** -- Lemkesoft has released GraphicConverter
7.4, a new version of its graphic conversion and editing utility
that comes with a number of new features. These include support for
several new formats, like JPS, PNS, and MPO, with a particular focus
on 3D graphics. The new version also adds conversion options, and
many image browsing and manipulation functions. Several existing
features have also received minor improvements; these include color
profiles, file management, some export tasks, and much more. A
number of bug fixes round out the update. ($39.95 new, free update,
100 MB, release notes)
Read/post comments about GraphicConverter 7.4.
**Sparrow 1.4** -- Sparrow has released version 1.4 of its eponymous
email app. This update primarily involves performance and
user-interface improvements, with everything from composing to
synchronizing receiving a speed boost and some polish. Sparrow 1.4
also adds a few welcome new features, such as integration with the
file sharing service CloudApp, pull-to-refresh, and support for
proper first-to-last message sorting in conversation view. Several
bug fixes round out the update. If Sparrow 1.4 prompts for your
password at every launch, Sparrow suggests some possible workarounds
until version 1.4.1 appears. ($9.99 new from the Mac App Store, free
update, 12.0 MB, release notes)
Read/post comments about Sparrow 1.4.
ExtraBITS for 17 October 2011
-----------------------------
by TidBITS Staff
article link:
Steve Jobs wasn’t the only industry giant to pass away the first
week in October — we also note the passing of Dennis Ritchie,
father of the C programming language and co-creator of the Unix
operating system. Plus, we direct you to an important article by
Instapaper developer Marco Arment, pointing out a potentially
serious failing of iOS 5.
**With iOS 5, It’s Cache as Cache Can** -- Marco Arment, developer
of Instapaper, explains why iOS 5 could mess up Instapaper and many
other apps. If an app stores a lot of data in Documents, Apple now
slaps its hand because Documents can be backed up by iCloud; but if
an app stores a lot of data in Caches, iOS 5 can now delete that
data at will. So any app that moves its data store from Documents to
Caches can lose that data. Apple argues that this is okay because
Caches is for data that can be reconstructed — say, by
re-downloading it from the Internet. But what if the deletion
happens while offline? Someone with a Wi-Fi-only device could store
stuff just before leaving the house, only to find it gone later.
And, as Marco points out, Apple deletes the data but the app
developer receives the hate mail.
Read/post comments
**Dennis Ritchie, Father of C, Passed Away October 8th** -- Another
giant of the computer industry died last week. Although nowhere near
as famous as Steve Jobs, Dennis Ritchie was responsible for two of
the key technologies that have made the modern Internet possible:
his C programming language and the Unix operating system he built
with Ken Thompson at Bell Labs. Ritchie was also the co-author, with
Brian Kernighan, of the definitive book about C, “The C
Programming Language,” which became so well known among
programmers that it is usually referred to by the authors’
initials: “K&R”. Wired has more about Ritchie’s life.
Read/post comments
$$
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